How Beauty Cups Joy

joy sleeps in
the cupped hands
of beauty; on the

dream of white
tipped wings opening
in flight, the rosy

blush of soft
skin--new, a few

notes plunked out,
taste of the dewy
watermelon and
dandelion, the
crips turn of a
page, the bruise

of  lips heavy with
kiss; soft padding of

paws. I carry
her gently, peek
in on her slumber—
she stirs and I
laugh too loud.
but, when beauty
is lifted high…
joy takes flight,
carries me into
the heart of
the Divine.

joining with bonnie and "the jammin" community today:

No Words for Beauty

There are always things left unsaid and I learned my lesson a long time ago not to bring up the hard stuff. It just makes people uncomfortable.

It leaves little holes all over me—tiny pinpricks in my skin that burn and eventually my heart begins seeping.

I am not good at pretending.

We come to see the family—to see my first great nephew. We come to see one baby and learn about another. And I have two seconds of surprise and shock and what?? before she casually places the ultrasound pictures in my hands.

Sometimes, there are no words for beauty.

We walk under these budding trees—a blanket of new lace over our heads—and hum to the sound of the river rushing fast below us. I can see the railroad tracks and just beyond—her curvaceous whitewaters.

There has been much rain of late and she is in a hurry to get to the sea and the sound of her calling to us as she rushes by fills me with terror and exhilaration.

Is this still the Tygart River? I ask the locals, who rarely name such things. They only know her by her intimate—by what nature gives to her. We don’t need to talk; this language is our native tongue.

I am with my sister and my mother and the kids don’t feel the earth’s heartbeat the way I do. How to say? Remember when? Remember when the woods were our refuge? And we would crash down ravines of fern and dying leaves and snack on wild onions when we grew hungry and then pick the ticks off of each other in the fading evening sun?

We would stay out all day, remember? And not eat anything. Maybe take a drink out of the creek.

She says it to me and we are lost in the smell of new leaves opening up and decaying leaves underfoot and the way our legs feel straining up the hill. I am in heaven but I want to cry.

We find a waterfall and stand underneath, let the spray cool our dirty skin. I am wearing a white blouse. I didn’t come prepared for hiking. My sister loaned me some tennis shoes and they are soaked through from wading through the mud.

When Teddy falls on the slippery rock, I watch his head snap back and I feel terror grip me. He catches himself, but he hits hard and I feel it in my soul. I feel the broken bone. He cradles his arm the whole way back and cannot bend it for the pain.

Me—I am so relieved that he didn’t hit his head—that he can still move his legs—that I can’t worry too much. We have lunch and he won’t eat.

I am looking at the ultrasound pictures, feeling sad so deep I cannot name it. I want to ask so many questions, but the bridge is too wide. I swallow hard.

And what I hold in my hand only screams to me what an outsider I am to my own family and I feel so lonely. I only have words to give but when the words are not received, when the words are not wanted…there is only silence.

There are eight hands at the table that have all made mistakes. We’ve given our hearts and our bodies to the wrong men. We’ve turned away from God in agony and defeat and loathed the skin we wear. This path we chose…it brought us back to our Good God broken and on our knees.

This is what I want to say. I want to say to leave the shame. Turn your face to the Light. If we belong to Him, we are clothed in grace. Only grace. No man or woman is covered in less. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.

Grace.

That is what the Divine Love is about.

And I want to ask about love and about the pain of bearing it all and I want to embrace this one who has my same blood.

But the bridge is too wide.

So we make nice and snap more pictures by the water and I pile my boys in the car to drive the long drive home. He and I spend the evening at the ER—with the X-ray techs and the other sickly people. And I feel tired, but I know it has nothing to do with the sleepless night or that long hike I took in my white blouse, or the long drive home, or the five hours in the ER.

I know that it’s about that long bridge I keep trying to cross. I’m not even halfway there and already I’m exhausted.  Teddy wears a blue cast now, but I am the one who is broken. Is there a cast for the heart? I ponder and stumble and I keep coming back to this:

The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. (Deut. 31:8)

I know I am not alone on this long and wearisome walk. There is One who walks beside. Sometimes this One will even carry. So. I keep putting one foot in front of the other. And I try to speak love when I can. Sometimes, silence must do.

Because sometimes, there are just no words for beauty.

Sharing with Emily:

And Jen today, and all the Soli Deo Gloria sisters:

Playdates: The Last Supper

Good Friday looms gray and the sky roars. We awaken to pounding rain, the house shakes with thunder. I press my forehead to the window and look up into white skies, draw breath at swaying trees.

Surely the Kingdom is breaking through…lamenting the memory that bleeds deep into the earth on this day.

It is also the first day of spring break. The boys stand beside me and stare at the rain. They know. There will be no wildflower hike today. No badminton or a day trip to one of the state parks. It’s an inside day.

By noon the rain has slowed to a soft drizzle so I pile them in the van, grab my Bible and we go searching for a holy moment in this soggy day. I’ve wanted to see since I heard the testimony from a dead man—his dear friend spoke of how his deceased friend brought a small group to this place…how it moved them all.

But it seemed odd to look for life in the place where the dead sleeps. So I never went. But today, I need life-giving moments. I need to remember. And I want them to too.

So we drive to the cemetery. 

 

I get the key to the mausoleum from the office and the caretaker asks, have you been here before? Have you seen it?

No, I say. This is the first time.

He smiles and says he hopes we enjoy. It’s life sized, you know.

We drive up the narrow ribbon, squeeze in between the dead and my boys are quiet. I wonder to myself, have they ever been to a cemetery before? And the answer is no and for a moment, I shiver at God’s great mercy.

The flowers have been placed and they roll out endlessly before us and there are sculpture gardens in between and I say, it’s pretty, isn’t it? But the place we are going is in the very back of the cemetery and I park and we get out and they still don’t have words.

I unlock the door and we enter slow, peek around the corner.

They want to know why there are names on the walls. And, what does it mean if there is a birth date, but no date of death? They speak in hushed tones, as if the dead will wake, and they run fingers over names carved in stone.

We have arrived and when they see it, their questions are stilled. We sit in the chapel and let the memory fall over us. For, we do remember this night. We remember it in hearts and veins and synapses. It is part of our story. 

We stand in front of the table and study the faces and breathe deep. A sculpture, a piece of art cannot capture it all. But it helps.

Close your eyes, I say, and listen.

They do and I read the scripture. And we hold hands and pray. When we leave, the sun has come out. I lock the doors. We drive around and look at the other sculptures. Until it starts to rain again.

 

 

When I return the key I ask the man about the artist. He doesn’t know the name. I think he is deceased now. It’s been part of our gardens since the 1960s, he says. He first made one for a church in St. Louis. We had to have one, so we commissioned him to make another. In 1964 it was featured in the World’s Fair in New York.

But he didn’t know the name.

We are quiet the rest of the day. And the rain keeps falling.

How about you? How do you embrace the God-joy? Every Monday I’ll be sharing one of my Playdates with God. I would love to hear about yours. It can be anything: outside, quiet time. Maybe it’s solitary. Maybe it’s loud and crowded. Just find Him. Be with Him. And come tell us about it.

Grab the Playdates button from the sidebar:

Sharing with L.L. Barkat today also:

Thinking About...

Unless we understand that the word is stronger than the will; unless we know how to approach a word with all the joy, the hope or the grief we own, prayer will hardly come to pass. The words must not fall off our lips like dead leaves in the autumn. They must rise like birds out of the heart into the vast expanse of eternity.--Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man's Quest for God

Eating Color

Tonight we watched our boys in a re-enactment of the Last Supper and the way the light shone through the stained glass onto their faces and the scripture reading and the candles and table set...It all reminded me how our God loves to create. It is Divinely given, this need to paint with words and color and pass stories to the next generation. Because we were created in his image. I've been thinking about it a lot lately. How art feeds--nourishes. The Lenten season--such a thin place--awakens the hunger for beauty; gives it a voice--a name: Jesus.

I asked Emily about it.   

Tell me what it means to you to create.  

She's an artist. A word-weaver. Songbird. She's amazing. I am so very pleased to welcome Emily Wierenga to the Wellspring...

I’ve left the can open and he’s 16 months and he tips it, white on carpet on wall and there’s so much white I laugh.

Soap and water and clean what son has spilled and it’s the one place I can breathe. This easel, this canvas, my church. This place between brush and canvas, this place between paint and world. I find calm with color, and suddenly I believe again. 

I make bright and the world makes right. Hansa Yellow Lemon and I recreate the wrong. 

Music now, and I sing with my brush, and my tools are Tupperware and paper towel and nothing fancy for this girl who’s never taken a lesson. For simple makes the art. 

It’s taking that child with the bruise, or the man without a leg or a world sick with cancer, it’s taking all of this and making it beautiful again. 

Globs of color and it’s acrylic so I don’t have to wait long, for the beauty is addicting and I paint when son naps or when he’s awake and happy, I paint when the sun’s out or behind a cloud, I paint when I have nothing to write—the editors are quiet and I need to make something or my soul will go stir-crazy. 

They ask me for my secret and I have none. When do you make the time? They say, and it’s impossible not to. Art is oxygen is faith is sanctuary.

 

The carpet and wall are clean again and son’s playing with crayons now and there are 64 colors, 64 shades of hope and he’s trying to eat them and I gently extract from mouth but secretly, I get it. 

I would eat color too, if I could. 

Paintings: Blooming and Sunflower City by Emily Wierenga. Prints available at the artist's website.

Easter Volley

Jeffrey has discovered badminton.

He dug deep in the old Rubbermaid chest we keep in the garage—the one with the bubble wands and the forgotten sandbox toys, the one with the spiders and deflated basketballs—he dug deep one day in boredom and pulled out a bent up racquet and a birdie. And then he found his dad’s old racquetball racket.

For me.

Every day before time to start dinner, he enters my space and casually asks, “Are you doing anything, mom?”

I always am.

Most days I stop what I am doing—whether reading, or writing, or laundry, or whatever—I put it down and join him in the front yard.

This youngest son of mine is always up to something. But I’ve never seen him sacrifice his body for a birdie serve. Reluctant though I am to give up my doings…I am soon laughing at his antics and joining in the good-natured taunt volley. There is no net so some of his returns are rather iffy, but I don’t care. We laugh and giggle while Lucy Mae watches.

It’s plain fun.

It feels like we aren’t doing enough to welcome Easter thisyear.

I read the devotional at dinner time, and we pray together the thanks for this amazing sacrifice. We each have given our own sacrifice this Lent but don’t talk about it so much. You’re not supposed to, you know. I feel changed by the days but I don’t know. I don’t know if they do. I am memorizing scripture and we walk together and I talk Jesus to them and I try to live Him every day. But the Easter egg days are over and the baskets have lost the shine. The boys will help to hide the eggs for the little ones at church tonight.

I read about Seder suppers and lit candles and foot washings. If I mention these things, a collective groan rises in my male-dominated household. Every year I try something new but this year, I just live it and trust.

The boys’ youth group is reenacting the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday. And last night Jeffrey wrote a poem about Easter. It talked about eggs and candy and baskets. But it ended just right—with Jesus.

Their faith is becoming their own, and though I celebrate the beauty of this, it frightens me a little. What if it isn’t important enough? What if they forget?

Last night, as I tucked the littlest in, we parted the blinds to stare up at the almost full moon. That big orange glow in the sky always moves deep places. Gravity, I think. But I can’t help thinking and I tell him the same thing I do every year, about the Hebrew calendar and how it’s related to the moon and how we know that Jesus looked up at this same orange face and must have marveled at its beauty.

The moon has seen it all.

Yesterday, I bought a new badminton set at Kmart. It came with four racquets and four birdies. And a net.

I can’t wait to try it out. He is so going down.

Sharing with Jen today:





And Bonnie:

And my sweet friend, Emily:

Playdates: Good Conversation

Flying miles and miles away from all that was familiar I expected to feel a little lost. I expected to feel a little disconnected...turned about...frayed.

But I never expected to find a piece of myself.

We both came for the meeting, she and I. We sat beside each other at dinner and laughed and chatted and enjoyed. And after, back at the hotel, it was too early to retire, so we arranged to meet back up.

In her room, she made tea in the complimentary coffee maker and we strolled out to the pool, mugs in hand.  We sat on the patio and soaked our tired feet in cool water and let words work out the aches of being away from home.

 

When the concrete became too hard we moved to the deck chairs, sipped lukewarm tea and just talked until dark hugged us into saying goodnight. And tired as I was, I lay in that queen-sized bed and couldn’t fall asleep. Conversation still hummed in my ears and found that I didn’t want it to end.

When was the last time I had listened this way? Not just hearing, but with an open heart—a movement to deeper intimacy? And when had I last shared so transparently?

I couldn’t remember. But it felt good and I knew our words were shepherded by that Invisible Goodness that never leaves me to my own devices. As I lay in that hotel bed, aware of how alone I was, I remembered lost days of sleepovers and giggling in the dark and sleepless nights.

And for a brief moment, I considered knocking on her door to see if she was game. But before I could act on such silliness, sleep came and tucked me in.

Thank goodness. I am, after all, a grown up.

Aren’t I?

Any Christian can, and many Christians do, listen and help us listen to the undercurrents in our language, the unspoken and unheard, the silences that undergird so much of the language that we use unthinkingly. These conversations can cultivate a sensitivity to the ways of the Holy Spirit, encourage an embrace of ambiguity, extend a willingness to live through times when there is no discernible “direction” at all. With such listening, we get used to living a mystery and not demanding information to footnote everything that is going on…--Eugene H. Peterson, Tell it Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers

How about you? How do you embrace the God-joy? Every Monday I’ll be sharing one of my Playdates with God. I would love to hear about yours. It can be anything: outside, quiet time. Maybe it’s solitary. Maybe it’s loud and crowded. Just find Him. Be with Him. And come tell us about it.

Grab the Playdates button from the sidebar:

Sharing with L.L. Barkat today also:

Thinking About...

I want to tear down the fences that we have erected between language that deals with God and language that deals with the people around us. It is, after all, the same language. The same God we address in prayer and proclaim in sermons is also deeply, eternally involved in the men and women we engage in conversation, whether casually or intentionally. But not always obviously. God's words are not always prefaced by "Thus says the Lord." It takes time and attentiveness to make connections between the said and the unsaid, the direct and the indirect, the straightforward and the oblique. There are many occasions when the imperious or blunt approach honors neither our God nor our neighbor. Unlike raw facts, truth, especially personal truth, requires the cultivation of unhurried intimacies...God does not compartmentalize our lives into religious and secular. Why do we? --Eugene H. Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers

On the Way to School this Morning

When my mom left my dad we moved into a huge old house downtown. My older brother and I did not want to switch schools, so we split our time: dad’s country home through the week and weekends with mom and our siblings in town. This could get complicated, as mom did not always have reliable transportation and her new status as working mother did not always allow the flexibility of making other arrangements. Usually, on Friday we would take a different school bus to get as close to town as possible and then walk the remaining several miles to mom’s. I was in the seventh grade—a skinny, timid kind of girl. I carried my clothes in a navy blue duffel bag and struggled to keep up with my brother’s much longer legs. He didn’t often slow down for me.

Monday morning, we would do the same in reverse—run to the bus rendezvous and end up at school. Often, we were late and made it on only adrenaline. I still remember that sense of urgency about getting to school. Sometimes I wonder what we must have looked like to the passersby—these two kids running up the street, clutching school books and the remains of the weekend in our arms.

Two kids left to fend for themselves.

This morning, on the way home from dropping the boys at school, I see them: two young boys, hurrying up the sidewalk. It is the way the shorter one walks—with a sense of urgency—that makes me take a second glance. They are only about a mile from the grade school, but these boys look much too old for grade school. If they are walking to the middle school—where I have just dropped my own boys—it is a pretty good hike—over three or four miles. They most certainly will be late.

I look at their figures in my rear-view mirror as I pass by and feel something stir. When I reach our neighborhood I make a u-turn and head back out on to Teays Valley Road. I pass the boys and pull into the Farmer’s Market, loop around and wait for them to catch up with me. When they reach the market, they cross in front of me without a glance. I can see that the short one is especially earnest to hurry along.

I roll down my window.

Are you boys going to the middle school?

The tall one looks at me.

Yes, he says.

Do you want a ride?

They do not hesitate.

As they climb in the back seat I fleetingly think of my own two who had just sat there a short while ago. We pull out on the road and I glance at them in the mirror.

What’re your names?

J, the short one offers.

W, says the other.

I try to make small talk. J is in the sixth grade and W the eighth. Just like my boys. They tell me that they are brothers, that they missed the bus this morning, that they live in the housing project up the road. I tell them who my boys are. They don’t know them. They just moved here from Charleston.

We have another friend who was with us, says J, and he looks up the street to see if the kid is anywhere to be found.

I don’t see him, I said.

I ask if they are going to the talent show at school today, tell them my Jeffrey will be playing the drums. They don’t have the two dollars the school is collecting for attendance. I kick myself for not bringing my purse with me.

I’d like to play the guitar, says W. W has a speech impediment. He is cute as can be.

 It’s really super-cool-awesome, he adds, grinning at me in the mirror. I smile back.

How come you moved from Charleston? I ask, after a minute.

My mom wanted to get away from the West side, J says. It was getting really bad there.

Was it dangerous?

Yeah, she thought so.

Do you like Hurricane?

Yeah. It’s ok.

Do you have other brothers and sisters?

My mom has four…five…no six kids.

Six kids? That’s a big family.

Some are cousins.

Your mom takes care of your cousins?

Yes.

Does she have anyone to help her?

No. Just her.

We fall silent. I begin to pray. Again.

What does one say in the span of a fifteen minute drive that can make a difference? I want to ask them if they go to church. I want to ask if they know their dads. I want to ask if they are hurting, what they need--if anything--and why don’t they have backpacks, anyway? I can’t find the words.

So I just ask, Do you boys like school?

Yeah, says J.

W says nothing.

You need to stay in school, I say. Stay in school and do well. That’s one way to get out of the bad stuff.

I know.

J looks out the window.

I struggle for words, keep praying silently. I don’t know these kids. I don’t know what their life is like.

What to say, Lord?

And then we are at school and they are gone.

I start to cry right away.

What just happened, Lord? I ask. I regret not saying anything meaningful. I regret letting them go so easily. Lord? Will you give me another chance? If I see them again, will you give me the words?

That’s when I see him. He is walking up the sidewalk towards me, arms pulled in the sleeves of his t-shirt to defend against the morning cold. He doesn’t have a backpack either.

I pull over at the next opportunity and turn around. When I catch up with him, I pull in the turn lane and roll down my window. He stops walking.

Are you going to the middle school?

I yell over gobs of oncoming traffic.

What?

I repeat and he nods, yes, he would like a ride. I caution  him to be careful crossing over to me and he hops in the van safely.

Do you know W and J?

Yea, they’re my cousins, he says.

What’s your name?

S.

Well, S, you’re going to be a little late, I say, and I smile at him in the rearview mirror as I head toward the middle school for the third time this morning…

photo by floridagizzi, via flickr Creative Commons.

Don't See the Wind

I am leaving tomorrow…catching one of those rare flights-by-myself and I am anxious. But life doesn’t stop for my neuroses and there are patients that need seen and boys need to go to music lessons and it’s Bible study night for Jeff. But when I am getting ready to leave with the boys, he surprises me and comes along.

You’ll be late, I say. But he shrugs it off and holds my eyes and my heart with that small step into my neuroses.

We drive through the rain. It always rains on Tuesdays. But usually I am driving through it and tonight I sit in the passenger seat and mentally check things off my list.

While the boys make music we dodge raindrops in the square and order Chinese food to go. I’m craving egg-drop soup and I can’t sip this golden broth without remembering when we first started dating and I had the flu. It was the only thing I wanted and he obliged. Maybe I fell in love with him that day because he sat with me as I shivered and sipped and was so attentive as I had never experienced. Maybe.

Remember?

We sit in the entry and wait for our take-out with a grandfather who is holding his grandson up to see the fish in the giant aquarium. A little boy and his mother bustle out of the dining room and as she pays, he runs to the fish tank, all--hey, mom, look! And stuff.

The man with the baby steps out of the way and the baby sneezes and the little boy says, are you okay? to a little one who doesn’t talk yet. And then he holds his hand out to the grandpa.

My name is Emitt. What’s your name?

Hi, Emmitt. I’m Sam.

He shakes the little boy’s hand.

Emmitt looks Sam up and down and sees his slacks and nice dress shirt.

Are you a president?

His voice is filled with awe and Jeff turns his back to this odd trio and grins at me.

No, Emmitt, I’m not a president.

Sam is smiling too.

Just then our order is ready and we take our brown bag and leave Emmitt and Sam to their conversation.

We wait for the boys and he tells me about work, about the new tenured position that has opened up.

Does she want you to apply?  I ask.

I’m excited and scared, and it would be great, but I’m not sure I’m ready to move all the way back into academics, he says.

And I listen and the smell of the food makes me happy and the van is warm and the rain falls in droplets on the windows.

I am in love.

When the boys were babies and we needed some time for just the two of us, we sometimes would take them to stay with their grandparents for a couple hours. I remember that I read in a parenting magazine that it is easier for young children to separate if they are the ones who leave the parents behind. Grammy and Papa tried picking them up and I would stand at the window and wave them goodbye.

It was hard to watch them leave. But they smiled and waved as they drove away. From. Me.

On the way back home the boys chatter and dad jokes and I stare through the trees on the surrounding hills. The trees are covered with down—the leaves just beginning to open. They look like tiny green florets, moss covering these naked branches. Redbud peppers the hillside.

I know it. If I want to walk on water…I have to get out of the boat.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.  But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” (Matt. 14:29-30)

I wonder what if felt like to sink, to feel the wind. But then…to be lifted up out of the cold depths.

Don’t see the wind, I whisper to myself. Don’t see the wind.

The sky is still grey as we pull into the driveway. We are home. And the rain keeps falling.

Linking up with Jen today:

Playdates: Of Puzzles and Poetry

Biblical exegesis is more studied and reflective than interpretation. It holds scripture up for contemplation in various ways. Sometimes it is like working a puzzle. Other times it is like appreciating art…Dr. Patricia Tull, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

I bought it for Teddy for Christmas—this 2000 piece puzzle depicting Van Gogh’s Starry Night. We’ve been working on it for a couple months now, struggling to correctly place the blues and purples and yellows and browns.

 

It has been harder than I thought it would. One day, in frustration, I turned all the pieces face up and spread them out on the dining room table. In this way, surely the right piece would jump out at me. But it was not to be. Still, I had to painstakingly look at the pieces surrounding the sought one—what color am I looking for? Are there characteristic marks? I hold the box picture above my work, moving pieces around accordingly; placing them on top of the whole until I can identify approximately to what area it belongs.

I learned how to do much the same with the Bible this weekend.

It was Biblical exegesis class, one in a series of a 4 or 5 year program I am participating in to become a Lay Pastor. This one, I was dreading. The reading assignments were laborious and the written homework tedious. We learned about different kinds of Biblical criticism: historical, form, literary, blah, blah, blah. And we were each assigned a passage of scripture to pick apart according to certain techniques.

This is crazy, I thought, as I went over my assigned passage one more time. It’s not like I’m going to write a scholarly paper or something.

I was nervous. I can’t do this stuff.

But…

Take the Word of God; add one passionate professor and a group of eager students--and those tedious procedures take on breath. The Word is alive.

Yes, it is like working a puzzle—looking at the context, reading the pieces before and after, keeping the entire canon in mind…asking questions: Are there characteristics that stand out here? Patterns? How does this fit into the surrounding context? What does it say to me today?

Gaps pull us into the story—we are not told everything, are we? Asking questions gets us engaged with the passage. (Dr. Patricia Tull, Louisville Seminary)

We talk about narrative and poetry and how different translations handle different literary genres. It is appreciating art and as we discuss Biblical poetry, I walk around the piece—study it from all angles.

Translations of poetry try to be true to the original language and also make it read eloquently in English, Dr. Tull says. And we look at some examples.

Her enthusiasm is contagious and the room hums.

I mean, just look at Genesis 12: 13, she exclaims. The text changes from narrative to poetry in the middle of God’s dialogue. So…even in God’s narration, there is poetry.

Of course there is.

A storm passes over the church where we study and rain pounds against brick and glass and wind wails outside. And right there in the middle of a discussion on anti-Semitism in the history of Biblical scholarship, the Divine knocks on the door of my heart and I am overwhelmed by this Being and the Kindness that keeps me company.

How about you? How do you embrace the God-joy? Every Monday I’ll be sharing one of my Playdates with God. I would love to hear about yours. It can be anything: outside, quiet time. Maybe it’s solitary. Maybe it’s loud and crowded. Just find Him. Be with Him. And come tell us about it.

Grab the Playdates button from the sidebar:

Sharing with L.L. Barkat today also:

When the Dreaming is Done

On the way to work this morning—traffic.  I sit for an hour, cradled in other commuters—the glass and space between us a million miles. Frustration is hot, like burning asphalt—I fidget with the radio and listen. A tractor trailer has caught fire…no injuries. Not yet, I think, boiling. Time hums. I play with my phone. Look at the man beside me. He doesn’t turn his eyes my way. I send an email, plug in my iPod. What in the world am I doing? I close my eyes and open them again.

The hills are still bare; the trees have only just begun to bud. I see delicate lacing of green, beginning fingers unfolding. There is redbud splashed about—the vibrant pinks like raspberries—those trees are sticking out their tongues at me.  Nanna-nanna-boo-boo, I can move, why can’t you? The morning breeze waves the branches. Further into the forest I see forsythia. The bright yellow is waning, having done the job of pronouncing spring’s arrival.

I am lost in the way the sky kisses the earth——the pinks and blues of early morning horizon. In the midst of this traffic snarl--where metal meets flesh and the hillsides witness it all—in the midst of this traffic snarl, I begin to trust God with my day. And I feel joy settle inside the walls of me, feel my heart lift to meet this sudden surprise.

Joy finds me when I forget myself. And I let myself dream.

Soon—too soon, really—traffic begins to slowly move, until we are all once again snaking toward the beat of the everyday rhythm.



when the dreaming is done
I lift my head from these
mountain-pillows--these heights
that support me, these heights
that bouy me. I lift my head.
there are mouths to feed, work
to do. I step down and wildflowers
scatter in the waking. seeds
blow up into the air and I
descend through possibility...
if only...but I--I must watch
my step, lest I miss my footing,
stumble, and fall.

Blogging with Emily today:








And Bonnie too!

ACCULTURIZE

–verb (used with object), -ized, -iz·ing.

to cause (a nation, tribe, or other ethnic group) to adopt the culture of another people.

Mother (so proud) on the way home from the Art Show in which both of her boys had pieces displayed: “See? You should take more art classes. You are both good at it.”

Son #1: I don’t need art classes, because art is inside of me.

Son #2 (in mock complaining tone): Mom, he is talking all free thinking and stuff.

Dad (to son #1): Are you trying to say that you have to fart?

Son #1: Actually, I just did.

Mom: Laughs hysterically because she knows she’s outnumbered. Says a prayer that she will never be acculturized.

Just a tiny peek into my world, friends :). Don't pity me. I'm holding out hope for granddaughters one day.

 

photos: scenes from last night's youth art show.